


Hot Like Me

by Attila



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bodyswap, F/F, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, Unabashed Ridiculousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 17:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attila/pseuds/Attila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uhura ends up in Kirk's mom's body. Then shit gets weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hot Like Me

Uhura blinks.

When she opens her eyes, she instinctively freezes in place before she even fully registers that she’s suddenly looking at the bowels of a ship instead of her familiar station on the bridge. She takes a deep breath, making sure her hands stay completely still—they’re holding onto wires, and she doesn’t know enough about engineering to guess what might happen if she lets go—and calmly tries to remember anything unusual that’s happened recently. It’s a long list.

Somewhat wryly, she reflects that there are probably other people in the world—people who don’t serve on the USS _Enterprise_ —that don’t have calm, automatic reactions to situations like “I am not where I was two seconds ago.” She feels a little sorry for them.

“Ma’am?” a voice says behind her. “Is everything all right?”

She takes a deep breath and considers saying yes. If there’s anything she’s learned from Jim Kirk, it’s that sometimes it’s better to pretend you know exactly what you’re doing and then figure it out as you go along, especially in unknown situations. Besides, she has no idea where she is, who the boy talking to her is, or where she’s ended up, and if he has no idea anything’s changed, it might be good to play those cards close to her chest, just in case. On the other hand, she has no idea what her hands are apparently doing, and she’s not sure she _could_ brazen it out.

What finally decides her, though, is when she looks down for a second and realizes with faint shock that her arms are _white_. Not chalk white, but—Caucasian.

“No,” she says finally. “I don’t think I am. If you could have someone come to take over for me, please, I would like to see a doctor as quickly as possible.” She’s not actually sure that a doctor is what she needs, but months of away missions and bizarre events and Dr. McCoy have trained her to always rule out medical problems first.

“Of course, Ambassador,” the boy behind her says, sounding confused and a bit alarmed. “If you’d like to step away, I’ll take you to Medical immediately. Or would you like us to send for someone instead?”

So whatever she’s doing to this ship isn’t dangerous or critical, which is something. With some relief, she lets go of her work and takes a step back, her mind sticking on the word ‘ambassador.’ What the hell is an ambassador doing working on the engineering deck of a ship? Shaking out her cramping fingers, she grabs at her hair, thankful that it’s long enough to be pulled in front of her face. Blond, shot with grey, and wavy. Interesting.

When she turns around slowly, she finds about twenty people staring at her with varying degrees of concern. They’re all wearing Starfleet uniforms, and most of them are somewhere around her age. Her normal age, that is.

“Ma’am?” one of them says, and she recognizes the voice of the boy she’s been talking to.

“Yes?” she says, and then abruptly remembers that he’d asked her a question. “No need to send for anyone,” she says briskly. She feels fine, and if not for the fact that she’s apparently white and blond and in a different body and a different place, she wouldn’t think there was anything wrong at all. “I’m fine to go to them.”

“Of course,” he says, though he still looks worried. “I’ll walk with you, if that’s all right.”

“Yes, thank you,” she says. “That would be fine.” She doesn’t want to sound too eager, but on the other hand, she does _need_ some sort of guide. She has no idea how she’d ever manage to find a doctor otherwise.

The boy looks relieved, though, like he expected her to argue, and she wonders if she’s behaving out of character for…whoever she is. If so, it doesn’t seem to matter that much, because he starts walking without questioning it, and she follows thankfully.

As they step out of the engineering deck into the clean, chrome hallways of some ship, he says tentatively, “Are you getting sick, Ambassador?”

“I don’t think so,” she says after a beat, because she really is feeling perfectly healthy. Grinning suddenly, she can’t quite stop herself from adding, “I’m just not quite feeling like myself.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, though he still looks confused.

_That makes two of us_ , she thinks wryly, but he keeps his silence as they walk along the corridors.

Instead of leading her to the MedBay, as she had expected, he takes to a shuttle hangar, and she wonders why on earth this ship isn’t supplied with medical personnel and where the hell the shuttle is taking to her. Briefly, she considers the idea that the boy is only pretending to not know what’s going on and is actually leading her somewhere she definitely doesn’t want to go. She’s spent enough time getting Jim Kirk out of bizarre situations to know that just because someone or something looks Starfleet doesn’t mean she can trust them.

“Ambassador?” the boy says, looking at her oddly when she doesn’t get onto the shuttle he opens, and strangely enough, that’s what decides her. She’s apparently an ambassador who wears—when she glances down to check—jeans and a t-shirt and works on engines while Starfleet personnel watch on a ship that doesn’t even have enough personnel for there to be a doctor on board. Somehow, that makes even less sense than the fact that she’s not even her own body. If someone had created this world for her somehow, she thinks they probably would have done a better job.

“Coming,” she says at last, choosing to go along with it for now. She doesn’t trust him, but that’s all right. She hadn’t been planning to anyway.

She’s grateful that she decided to get into the shuttle a few minutes later, though, when she realizes that the spaceship she’d been on is currently docked at a space station orbiting _Earth_. At least now she knows where the fuck she is. And sure enough, the shuttle takes her down to the planet—not just Earth, San Francisco. The Academy. Other than the _Enterprise_ itself, there isn’t any place in the universe more convenient for dealing with a “well, I am no longer in my own body” problem.

As she and the boy walk to the medical center, she inspects her reflection in windows. She’s older, definitely—on the older side of middle age, no younger than fifty—but still fit and pretty objectively hot. The weirdest thing is that the face actually looks _familiar_ , and she spends most of the walk trying to remember where on earth she’s seen it before.

She finally gets into a room with a doctor—the boy leaving her there with one last worried look over his shoulder—who smiles at her encouragingly and says, “So what seems to be the problem, Ambassador?”

“I need a full medical scan as soon as possible,” she says promptly, and then she takes a deep breath. Time to figure out how important people think this ambassador is. Trying to seem confident, she adds, “And I also need a channel opened with the USS _Enterprise_. I have to speak to Captain Kirk immediately.”

The doctor looks at her with some surprise but luckily just says, “Sure thing. Full medical scan and a communications line to your son.”

Uhura feels like the world comes to a screeching halt. “Wait, _what_?”

She gets a confused stare in return. “I said we’ll get you that scan and your son on line as soon as possible. Is everything all right, Ambassador?”

Ambassador. Ambassador Winona Kirk, who used to be Chief Engineer on the _Kelvin_ and still sometimes teaches master classes. Whose face is eerily familiar because Uhura’s seen it on the news and works with her son every day of her goddamn life.

“Oh, you have _got_ to be shitting me,” she says.

\--

“Hey,” Jim says when she finally gets him on a PADD. He looks wary and a bit suspicious, and she figures that’s as good an indication as any that there’s something up with her own body on his ship.

“Hey,” she says back and then sighs and decides to go for broke. “Captain, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but your mother had better be in my body somewhere on that ship.”

Jim breaks out into a huge smile and starts laughing. “Uhura!” he says. “It’s great to hear from you. Yeah, your body’s sitting somewhere in Bones’s lair getting the full torture treatment. Sorry about that, but you know how he gets.”

“Yes, sir,” she says dryly.

“You know my mom’s face did that exact same thing when I drove a car off a cliff when I was a kid?” he says conversationally.

“When you _what_?” she says.

“That one too,” he says. “Anyway, we’re already on our way back, so we should see you in a couple days. Try not to break my mom’s body before we get there.” He makes a face. “You know the worst part about this whole thing is that if it were anyone else, I could make so many good jokes about getting in her pants, but I can’t, because it’s my _mom_.”

“Yes, sir,” Uhura says, rolling her eyes. “ _That’s_ the worst part.”

\--

Two days later, Jim, Spock, and her own body walk into the hospital room where they’ve been keeping her. “Nyota,” Spock says, going to her immediately. “Are you well? Doctor McCoy has gone to speak with the doctors here.”

“I’m fine,” she says and glances over at her body, which is slouching against the door in a way she’s pretty sure it’s never done before. “You’re very healthy,” she adds.

“Thanks,” Winona Kirk says and smoothes a hand down the side of Uhura’s body. “You’re very hot. I’m loving getting to do the young and gorgeous thing again.”

Jim chokes and starts cracking up. Uhura eyes him and then says, as evenly as she can, “I think your boobs are bigger than mine, though.”

Jim’s eyes flick down to her chest, and he groans, knocking his head against the wall. “Oh, god, I just mentally compared my mom’s boobs to someone else’s, and they _won_. God, I hate you. I have to get out of this room. Spock, I’m leaving you in charge. Thank god you and Uhura broke up, I don’t know what I’d do if I thought you were thinking sexy thoughts about my mom’s body _or_ the body with my mom’s head in it.”

“Yes, sir,” Spock says dryly. “I will endeavor to keep my head free of sexy thoughts.”

“Did he just…?” Jim says. “He just said ‘sexy thoughts.’ Okay. I’m going to go now.”

As soon as he leaves, Winona Kirk starts laughing. “Nice job,” she says, walking over and holding out a hand for a high-five. “I love fucking with my son.”

Uhura slaps her hand tentatively, because for all she didn’t immediately recognize her body, she knows that Winona Kirk is famous for being something of a badass. “Any time, Ambassador,” she says.

“Ugh, ‘Ambassador,’ really?” Winona says. “You’re in my body, I think we’ve hit the first name stage of our relationship.”

Uhura can’t help making a face. “I generally prefer ‘Uhura,’ if that’s all right.”

“Whatever you like,” Winona says, going over to the other bed in the room. “Is this for me? Nice of them, I guess, though I don’t really think it’s necessary to keep us in a _hospital_. You don’t feel sick at all—though you have a pulled muscle in your side that apparently you weren’t telling anyone about, not smart—”

“Oh, god, don’t tell me you mentioned it,” Uhura says, kneejerk. “I was dealing with it.”

Winona rolls her eyes—so that’s what that looks, Uhura thinks, good to know her face does disdain that well—and says, “No, you were ignoring it. It’s not the same thing. Seriously, though, a _hospital_? I guess I should be grateful we’re not under quarantine, but I kind of doubt switching bodies is an illness you can _catch_.” She pauses. “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if it were, though?” She grins. “I’d love to see Commander Spock’s non-expressions on Jimmy’s face.”

Uhura imagines it—and the other way around—and starts laughing.

\--

“Want to play strip poker?” Winona says, lounging on her hospital bed in between tests.

Uhura, who had been kind of distracted by watching her fingers play with her hair, says absently, “You’re going to tangle it that way,” before rewinding and parsing the previous sentence. “You want to play strip poker?”

“I’m bored,” Winona says, giving up the hair and stretching her legs out to look at them. “And besides, I figure neither of us has got _anything_ we haven’t seen, at this point.”

“That would make it a little less interesting, don’t you think?” Uhura says. “Kind of ruins the mystery of it, after all.” She peeks down the shirt she’s wearing partly to prove her point, and partly because Winona’s boobs really are kind of fantastic. She might be reacting to the situation practically, but that doesn’t make her _dead_.

“Well, what’s your brilliant idea, then, since you’re already so jaded about my body,” Winona says.

Uhura shrugs. “Do you have any allergies?”

Winona eyes her oddly, and Uhura has to briefly wonder if that’s what her face looks like whenever Jim’s come up with a new idea. “You want to send me into anaphylactic shock?”

“No,” Uhura says. “I just thought it would be smart to learn about each other’s health problems, while we have to live in these bodies.”

“Oh, _boring_ ,” Winona says. “That’s for the doctors. Let’s do something fun.”

Uhura hesitates. “This is a bad idea,” she warns.

“I love it already,” Winona says. “Shoot.”

“We could just sneak out,” Uhura says. “It’s not like they’ve got guards on the doors. We could go to a museum.”

Winona makes a face. “Or a strip club.”

“We’re not going to a strip club,” Uhura says firmly.

\--

They end up going to the zoo.

It’s surprisingly fun, considering it’s just a little too cold and they hadn’t managed to grab appropriate clothing on their way out. They wander around aimlessly for a while, finding the most random animals they can think of until they finally wind up in front of the elephants.

“Elephants,” Winona says, looking up with a smile, “are amazing animals. Incredibly intelligent and affectionate and protective of each other.” Grin turning mischievous suddenly, she adds, “Matriarchal, too.”

“Sounds like you wish you were one,” Uhura teases, and Winona laughs out loud.

“Well, I can’t help coveting the ears,” she says, and Uhura wants to say something that would maybe imply that she’s already got them, but under the circumstances, she has a feeling it would just backfire on her.

They buy packs of peanuts from a nearby stand and sit on a bench together. Winona slings her legs up over Uhura’s lap and looks at them appreciatively. “Your legs,” she says seriously, “are phenomenal. I’m not sure I _ever_ had legs this good.”

Uhura rolls her eyes. “A lot of it is genetics.”

“Well, I am seriously objectifying your genes right now,” Winona says and snickers when Uhura groans and pretends to try and push her off.

“Stop looking at your own legs like that, it’s making me look weird,” she says.

“Please, like you weren’t ogling my boobs earlier,” Winona says, pulling a peanut out of her bag and tossing it into the air, hanging her head back to catch it. She misses.

Uhura starts snickering at the bemused look on her own face. “Nice job,” she says.

“Shut up,” Winona says, nudging her in the stomach with her leg. “I can usually do that. It must just be your body that doesn’t know how to.”

“Oh?” Uhura says, raising her eyebrows. She carefully picks out a peanut of her own, throwing it up and tilting her head back, trying not to think about it too much. She doesn’t even come close. “Care to revise that theory?”

“Now it’s just your mind that doesn’t know how to,” Winona says, flicking another peanut at her forehead. Uhura catches that one in her hand and eats it calmly. “It’s not my fault you’re messing up my body’s muscle memory.”

“Oh, so no matter which of us can’t do it, it’s my fault, hmm?” Uhura says. Leaning closer, she adds, “I bet you can’t actually do it.”

“Oh, you do, do you,” Winona says, moving so that they practically have to go cross-eyed in order to still see each other. Absently, Uhura thinks that she’s never seen her own eyes this close up before. They’re nice, especially narrowed in that challenging way. “No matter what shortcomings your body has landed me with.”

“Shortcomings?” Uhura says. “Five minutes ago, you couldn’t shut up about how amazing my legs are!”

“I’m not trying to catch peanuts in my _thighs_ ,” Winona says and then tilts her head thoughtfully. “Though we could try that.”

That’s how Spock finds them an hour later, still sitting in front of the elephants and throwing peanuts at each other. “Nyota. Ambassador Kirk,” he says, voice completely flat.

“Uh-oh, looks like we got caught playing hooky,” Winona murmurs, giggling, but Uhura sighs and stands up, brushing her clothes off.

“Sorry,” she says, going to him. “We’d been in that hospital room a really long time.”

“Nevertheless,” he says. Just ‘nevertheless,’ because he _knows_ she knows all the reasons it was a dumb thing to do.

“Yeah,” she says and doesn’t argue when he takes them back.

“She is becoming a bad influence on you,” Spock murmurs as they sit together on the shuttle.

“Come on, Spock, I’m no saint, and it was my idea,” she whispers back, rolling her eyes. “Besides,” she adds, thinking of the curve of her own neck tilted back in a laugh, “it was a lot of fun.”

\--

“How do you usually sleep?” Winona asks the next morning, scowling and poking at her breakfast without eating any.

“Sorry, what?” Uhura says, looking up.

“What position do you sleep in?” Winona repeats. “I can’t seem to get comfortable.”

“Oh,” Uhura says, chewing slowly. “On my side, I suppose.”

“Really?” Winona says, making a face. “I hate sleeping on my side.”

Uhura shrugs. “I’ve noticed.” She’d tried it the first night, tossing and turning until she’d finally relaxed onto her stomach. “Here, let me show you. Lie down.”

“What?” Winona says.

“You haven’t gotten much sleep, right?” Uhura says, getting up off her bed and crossing the few feet to Winona’s. “Lie down.”

Winona looks skeptical, but does as she’s told. Carefully, Uhura tries to arrange her body into the position she usually ends up falling asleep in. It’s weird, positioning her own body like a doll, and her hands feel hot and clumsy on Winona’s—her—skin.

Taking a deep breath, she says, “Do you think you can sleep now?”

Winona sounds almost hoarse when she says, “Yeah.”

\--

Their days in the hospital are basically nothing but medical exams and doctors telling them (over and over and over), “Well, _physically_ there’s nothing wrong with you,” while Winona throws things at them and says, “We know that, why don’t you go find some _new_ information.”

“Mom, you’ve got to stop terrorizing the staff,” Jim says, laughing, when he comes by to visit. “Half of them are too scared to even come in here.”

“Good,” Winona says unrepentantly. “They should be, if all they’ve got to say is, ‘sorry, we still don’t know anything new, stay here and twiddle your fingers while we stroke our mustaches and try to look intelligent.’”

Uhura snorts, and Jim looks at her with dawning horror. “Oh, please don’t tell me you two are friends now. I don’t know if I can handle that.”

“You can’t handle a lot of things, Jimmy,” Winona says, flicking an empty jello tray at him.

“ _Mom_ ,” he says, batting it away.

Uhura shrugs. “If you don’t want us spending time together, get them to figure out how the fuck to get us back in our own bodies. And then get us out of here.”

“Cabin fever?” Jim says. “Getting sick of my mom? Please say yes.”

“Your mom is not the problem,” Uhura says, because Winona Kirk is a surprisingly cool roommate. “The hospital food, on the other hand, is complete and utter shit. Get us out, or I will ask her about every single embarrassing thing you have ever done as a child.”

“And I’ll tell her,” Winona says, smirking. “Happily.”

“This is like a nightmare,” Jim mutters. “I can’t believe you two are ganging up on me. Or, I can, really, which is worse. Okay. We are going to fly back to every planet we visited right before… _this_ happened,” he says, waving a hand between them. “And we are going to punch people until they tell us what did and how to get it reversed.”

“Maybe _try_ diplomacy, baby,” Winona says.

“You sound like Spock,” he tells her.

Winona raises her eyebrows. “Commander Spock calls you ‘baby?’”

Jim sputters. “ _Not_ what I meant.”

“Are you sure about that?” Uhura says, enjoying herself. “Because I’ve seen you—”

“Okay!” Jim says loudly. “We’re going to fix this and get you two _far away_ from each other. Like, different galaxies. Please just…don’t talk. At all.”

He makes his escape, and Winona laughs. Uhura wonders if she’s crazy for thinking it sounds better coming out of her mouth when Winona does it.

“Well, that was just too much fun,” Winona says and holds out a fist in the space between their hospital beds.

“Yeah,” Uhura says and bumps it.

\--

“So it turns out me and Uhura accidentally touched this ancient artifact at the same time,” Jim says on the PADD. “And it did ancient artifact stuff.”

“I don’t touch ancient artifacts without knowing what they do first,” Uhura says, actually kind of offended. Everyone knows better, especially after that one time with Chekov and the puppies.

Jim grimaces. “Yeah, so, apparently this ancient artifact also looks like any old rock and got lost in their sacred forest years ago.”

“…Ah,” Uhura says.

“Right?” Jim says. “You’d think they’d have signs.”

“Wait,” Winona says, hanging over Uhura’s shoulder. “If you and Uhura touched it at the same time, why was I the one who switched bodies with her?”

Jim pauses. “…Science, Bones and Spock say,” he says after a moment. “I mean, they actually said a bunch of other stuff, but I kind of tuned it out. Anyway, there are…science reasons it couldn’t be me, so it went to the next most genetically similar person. That’s you, Mom.”

‘Science reasons,’ Uhura figures, is almost definitely code for ‘that one time I kind of died and Bones brought me back to life with Khan’s blood and also almost caused a tribble apocalypse.’

“Fine,” Winona says. “Can they undo it?”

“Yeah,” Jim says. “They’ve got this sacred ritual thing they’ve got to do tonight, and then everything should be back to normal.”

“Can’t wait,” Winona says. “See you when I’m me again, Jimmy.” She reaches over Uhura’s shoulder to hang up and then stays there for a second. “Science reasons?” she murmurs so quietly Uhura almost misses it, even though she’s so close that each of Winona’s breaths tickles her ear. She has to remind herself being attracted to _her own body_ is definitely crossing some sort of line.

“I’ll explain later,” Uhura whispers, just as quiet, and Winona nods minutely, her cheek brushing up against Uhura’s hair.

Winona gets up off of Uhura’s bed and stretches. “Late enough that no one else is going to be coming in tonight, don’t you think?” she says.

Uhura glances over at the clock. “Probably. Why?”

“You know what I got out of that conversation?” Winona says conversationally, reaching down to touch her toes.

“We’re going to be ourselves tomorrow?” Uhura says.

“Sort of,” Winona says and then climbs back on the bed and straddles Uhura’s hips. “Except I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘if we’re going to have sex, it’s going to have to be tonight.’”

Uhura takes several deep breaths before speaking. Even so, all she manages to get out is, “I’m sorry, what?”

“Sex,” Winona says. “You and me. Just think about it—sex with someone who’s _intimately_ familiar with exactly what the body you’re in likes.” She leans down to give Uhura a kiss, dirty and full of teeth, which she usually isn’t even that into but—okay, apparently she really is right now.

After a moment, Uhura collects herself enough to kiss back, giving as good as she gets, remembering what her body likes, and Winona makes a gratifying moan and grips Uhura’s hips hard. They pull back, panting, and Uhura looks up at—her own face. “Okay,” she says. “But we’re going to _have_ to turn off the lights.”

“Okay,” Winona says, laughing and wiping her mouth. “I can work with that.”

\--

“You _banged my mom_ ,” Jim Kirk’s horrified voice says, cutting into Uhura’s dream about—something involving Klingons, possibly. It’s already fading away as she groans and puts her arm over her face.

“How are you even back this early?” she mutters. “You weren’t anywhere near close enough to Earth last night.” She pauses, trying to figure what sounded off about that, and realizes that she just spoke in her own voice. She opens her eyes and stretches her arm out. Brown. Thank fucking god. “Hey, Winona, we’re us again.”

“Oh, _awesome_ ,” Winona says from next to her. “Where are my pants?”

“Those aliens are seriously awesome, we should think about trading with them,” Jim says. “But that’s not the point, because you _banged my mom_.”

“Technically, I kind of banged myself,” Uhura says, grabbing the bra she’d tossed to the side last night. Pausing to think about it, she hands it to Winona instead.

Jim blinks. “Okay, that’s kind of kinky, so, like, respect, but on the other hand, no, I’m pretty sure you still banged my _mom_.”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t have done it if you switched bodies with someone, Jimmy,” Winona says as she does a full body wriggle to get her pants on. Uhura glances over at her, trying to pretend she’s just looking for a shirt. Yeah, still hot.

“It was really good,” she says absentmindedly, and Jim chokes and makes retching noises. She thinks about it for a second, and then says carefully, “If you want to do it again, I’m pretty sure I remember exactly how your body reacts to different things.”

Winona stops in the middle of pulling a shirt over her head and looks Uhura up and down, before starting to grin. “Your place or mine?”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "bodyswap" square on my Femslash February Trope Bingo card. Beta'd by the incomparable [zornslemon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zornslemon/pseuds/zornslemon) ([acommonrose](http://acommonrose.tumblr.com) on tumblr), without whom there would not be nearly enough sexual tension.
> 
> I'd love it if you let me know what you thought here or on [tumblr](http://attilarrific.tumblr.com)! Or feel free to just drop by to say hi. :)


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